In Situ and In Silico Methods for Senescence Identification in Human Liver Diseases

Cellular senescence and aging are two distinct but overlapping entities that are both characterized by the intracellular accumulation of lipofuscin, the "dark" matter of the cell. Tissues like liver composed of slow dividing cells are prone to lipofuscin accumulation, thus creating an interesting intersection between aging and senescence. In the current work, we propose two approaches for the discrimination of these entities. The first one regards the adjustment of an established in situ senescence detecting algorithm in human liver diseases. The second one is based on a novel senescence molecular signature that can be applied, solely or complementary, to the in situ algorithm, in RNA data from the above clinical settings for in silico identification of cellular senescence.